Rice in a private grip
BY DEVINDER Sharma
THE biological inheritance of the world's major food crop is now in
the hands of a Swiss multinational.
The journey of rice, beginning with the emergence of wild rice some
130 million years ago, transcending through the Himalayas, passing
through southern China, hopping to Japan, travelling to Africa, traded
to Middle East and the Mediterranean, shipped to Mexico and America, has
finally ended on the banks of the River Rhine in Basel, Switzerland.
Swiss biotech giant Syngenta, based at Basel in Switzerland, has
tightened its monopoly control over rice. Seeking global patents over
thousands of genes in rice (a single grain of rice contains 37,544
genes, roughly one-fourth more than the genes in a human body), the
multinational giant is all set to own rice, the world's most important
staple food crop.
It was expected. Only the trade negotiators who have been
relentlessly winding and unwinding the complex maze around intellectual
property at the Trade-Related Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS)
negotiations, and the international scientific community, had refused to
see the signs on the wall.
With the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) clearly and
steadily backing the biotechnology industry's agenda of private control
of the world's food supply, and with the governments of major rice
producing countries of Asia refusing to wake up to the emerging threats,
Syngenta has been allowed scrumptiously to take control.
Delivering a keynote address at the inaugural ceremony of the
International Year of the Rice, 2004, at Basel in Switzerland, which for
reasons understandable, was jointly organised by the Swiss government,
this writer had warned against the strengthening of the private control
over rice: "The celebration of the year 2004 as the International Year
of Rice is a toast to acknowledge the emergence of Switzerland on the
world's rice map". Incidentally, Switzerland does not grow any rice.
Not limited to rice
A year later, Syngenta spilled the beans. In August 2005, in a
communication to four NGOs - Berne Declaration (Switzerland), Swissaid
(Switzerland), the German NGO No Patents on Life and Greenpeace - Adrian
Dubock, Head of Biotechnology Ventures in Syngenta, stated: "Syngenta's
original commercial interest (discontinued for now, but not necessarily
for ever) was for sales in the industrialised countries of nutritionally
enhanced crops, included, but not limited to rice."
Accordingly, the patent on the GE rice will not be dropped because
our shareholders wouldn't thank us if we had forgone that possibility.
Yet the company claims there are no commercial interests in this
technology at the moment.
The civil society groups had asked Syngenta to drop some of its rice
patent claims. The proprietary claim are also aimed at other important
food crops like wheat, corn, sorghum, rye, banana, soyabean, fruits and
vegetables besides others.
The company claims that most of the gene sequences that it has
invented' are identical in other crops and therefore the patent needs to
extend to those crops also.
In all, Syngenta has filed for mega-patents on 15 groups of gene
sequences covering thousands of genes, peptides, transgenic plants and
seeds, method of genetic engineering etc.
One of the patent application, for patent 1 through 6, belongs to the
same patent family' (application # 60/300, 112) and runs into 12,529
pages.
Syngenta claims it invented more than 30,000 gene sequences of rice.
Syngenta, in collaboration with Myriad Genetics Inc of the USA, had
beaten Monsanto in the game of mapping the genetic structure of rice by
sequencing more than 99.5 per cent of the rice genome.
Top executives of Syngenta had then told the New York Times that
while the companies would not seek to patent the entire genome, they
would try to patent individual valuable genes. They categorically stated
that Syngenta and Myriad were well on their way to finding many of
those.
True to its words, Syngenta finally filed for global patents before
the European Patent Office, US Patent and Trademark Office and the World
Intellectual Property Rights Organisation (WIPO).
Thanks to the untiring efforts of four civil society organisations,
which have been on a hot trail of the patenting follies, the world would
have never known the patently unfair designs of the private companies.
While the company does acknowledge that the scope of many of these
patents will be reduced as the examination of patents proceeds, but the
mere fact that the scientific community and the Asian governments have
turned into a mute spectator is worrying enough.
Syngenta's efforts to seek control over rice has severe implications
for the future of rice research and its resulting impact on food
security and hunger.
Asia might lose control
For countries like India and Japan, one of the seats of the origin of
rice, it is an ominous sign. In other words, the biological inheritance
of the world's major food crop is now in the hands of a Swiss
multinational.
If Syngenta's application for global patents is accepted, the Asian
countries will lose all control that comes through sovereign' control
over genetic resources (as defined by the Convention on Biological
Diversity, 1992) of the staple grain.
Staple food for more than half the world's population, rice, is part
of the Asian culture. Rice is the unstated religion of Asia, and in
essence rice is the life of Asia. It is in Asia still that more than 97
per cent of the world's rice is grown.
Nearly 91 per cent of world's rice is produced in Asia, and 92 per
cent is eaten in Asia. Rice is the principal food of three of the
world's four most populous nations: People's Republic of China, India
and Indonesia.
For more than 2.5 billion people in these three countries alone -
rice is what they grow up with. For centuries, rice has been the
sociology, tradition and lifeline for the majority world.
Syngenta has already made it clear that the patents will restrict
access to the genomic map and expects proprietary control over any
research carried out with the information. By denying access to these
genes of commercial value, the company will in reality block public
sector science in the developing countries.
It will be the beginning of a scientific apartheid against all Third
World countries.
(Courtesy: Deccan Herald) |